He employed
counsel, and from term to term, was compelled to dance attendance at
court. Here the old hunter listened to the quibbles--the subtleties, and
to him, inexplicable jargon of the lawyers. His suits were finally
decided against him, and he was cast out of the possession of all, or
nearly all the lands which he had looked upon as being indubitably his
own. The indignation of the old pioneer can well be imagined, as he saw
himself thus stript, by the quibbles and intricacies of the law, of all
the rewards of his exposures, labors, sufferings, and dangers in the
first settlement of Kentucky. He became more than ever disgusted with
the grasping and avaricious spirit--the heartless intercourse and
technical forms of what is called civilized society.
But having expended his indignation in a transient paroxysm, he soon
settled back to his customary mental complacency and self-possession;
and as he had no longer any pledge of consequence remaining to him in
the soil of Kentucky--and as it was, moreover, becoming on all sides
subject to the empire of the cultivator's axe and plough, he resolved to
leave the country. He had witnessed with regret the dispersion of the
band of pioneers, with whom he had hunted and fought, side by side, and
like a band of brothers, shared every hardship and every danger; and he
sighed for new fields of adventure, and the excitement of a hunter's
life.
Influenced by these feelings, he removed from Kentucky to the great
Kanawha; where he settled near Point Pleasant.
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